Chennai-based online aggregation platform Komparify on Thursday announced the acquisition of app-based mobile plans platform Ireff for an undisclosed amount, aiming to expand its presence in prepaid plans application space and broaden its mobile app capabilities.

Komparify helps consumers find and choose the best plan to recharge, pay bills and buy new connections using a variety of wallets and payment options and aggregate the best mobile, DTH and broadband plans from over a 100 operators across India.

"We are proud to acquire this asset and bring choice to Ireff customers to discover plans from more services and allow transactions using India's most cutting edge payment products," said Jigar Doshi, Co-Founder, Komparify.

The Chennai-based company plans to run both apps -- Komparify and Ireff -- independently with its existing team.

The strategic acquisition integrates recommendation technology with transaction technology to enhance the current as well as new user experience.

Post the acquisition, Ireff's team is building a hyper-local commerce platform called Zopnote as an innovative cloud solution to address the pain points of vendors and increase convenience for end customers doing commerce.

"With Komparify, our users will now be able to do the same for post-paid mobile, DTH and streaming movies," said Nizam Mohideen, Founder-CEO, Ireff.

This expansion is going to continue with Komparify's plans to launch a streaming entertainment section by aggregating movies, TV shows, sports and live TV from various OTT streaming services, with the functionality of the entertainment section also rolling out on Ireff's app.

Currently, Komparify has over five million users and plans to double the user base to 10 million users, the company claimed.

To enhance its in-home delivery service, Amazon has launched new products and tools within its "Key by Amazon" offering for Prime members, beginning with the US.

The online retail giant unveiled "Key for Garage" that will allow customers to monitor and control their garage door via the Key app.

"In addition to receiving deliveries at home and in your car, eligible Amazon Prime members will soon be able to get deliveries in their garage," Amazon said in a statement on Tuesday.

"Key for Garage" is made possible by integrating Key with CGI's proprietary "myQ-connected" technology.

"We started with the idea of in-home package delivery and quickly learned that our customers found peace of mind from the control Key gives them over their most important place - their homes - even when they aren't there themselves," said Rohit Shrivastava, GM of Key by Amazon.

Amazon launched "Key" in 2017 and the in-car delivery facility later. The new delivery services are available to Prime customers in some markets at no additional cost.

Other offerings include the new Schlage Encode Smart Wi-Fi Deadbolt -- the first WiFi-enabled smart lock for Key.

The smart lock offers an innovative option for any customer who wants to experience the magic of a keyless life without any additional hub or hardware.

"Even with all the advancements in the category, we recognized there was still a gap in simple, secure, high performance and cost-effective, all-in-one access solutions," said Lee Odess, Vice President, Solutions Providers Business at Allegion, maker of Schlage locks.

"Key for Business" is a smart fob for drivers delivering Amazon packages to commercial and residential properties.

"The technology allows building owners and managers to give controlled access to delivery drivers to drop off Amazon packages to their residents, and eliminate the need for building staff to manually give access each time deliveries are made," said amazon.

The Schlage Encode Smart Wi-Fi Deadbolt is available for pre-order for $249.99 or $299.99 when bundled with an Amazon Cloud Cam. It will begin shipping to the US customers on March 5.

Google is working towards bringing group calling feature as well as a new low light mode on its popular video chat mobile app Duo.

One of the most requested Duo features since launch has been group calling, something Apple's FaceTime now supports for up to 32 users at once. It's finally coming to Duo, although only for up to seven people, the Android Police reported late on Monday.

Users need to first create a group with the contacts they wish to video chat with on the platform and then they can start a call with all at the same time.

"Tapping on the group name in the bottom right corner of a call only brings you a list of group members," the report added.

The new low light mode essentially tweaks the users' video so others can see them better during night-time conversations.

However, it is not known when either of the new features will be rolled out for the users.

And you can't simply download an update to get them -- Google appears to be controlling test access on the server side. If you can wait, though, Duo could soon be more competitive with other video-focused calling apps, according to the Egadget.

While many parents blame Snapchat for keeping their kids engaged on phones for a very long time, the popular messaging app's Co-founder Evan Spiegel limits screen time for his seven-year-old stepchild, the media reported.

The 28-year-old billionaire, who is the CEO of Snapchat's parent company Snap Inc. allows his stepson, Flynn, 90 minutes of screen time a week, The Sunday Times reported.

Flynn is the son of Spiegel's wife, the Australian model Miranda Kerr, from her marriage to the actor Orlando Bloom.

Spiegel, who is credited with making selfie mainstream and building himself a $1.4 billion fortune at the same time, is not alone in limiting screen time for kids at home.

Late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs never let his kids use iPads at home. "We limit how much technology our kids use at home," Jobs had told The New York Times.

Microsoft founder-turned-philanthropist Bill Gates, in an interview to the Mirror last year, said he has set strict rules for how his three kids grew up "in a home that forbade cell phones until age 14, banned cell-phone use at the dinner table, and set limits on how close to bedtime kids could use their phones".

Research has found that excessive use of social media including Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram is associated with poor well-being which could lead to depression and loneliness.

A study, published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, showed that limiting screen time on these apps could boost one's wellness.

The app offers personalized services such answering queries, make suggestions and recommendations and follow commands.

Working like a real personal assistant, it makes phone calls, checks out information, schedules events, gives reminders, navigates areas, gives information on entertainment and social media. The app accepts voice as well as typed commands.

According to AI-Assis CEO Siva Kumar the app has been designed with advanced machine learning techniques. It learns from the user's actions, choice and preferences to offer enhanced services.

He said while there were several apps in the market that carry out human like actions for its users, most of them were lacking in AI and machine learning.

Al-Assi was started by alumni of International Institute of Information Technology-Hyderabad and incubated at the same institute.

In a blow to brand Android, Google is planning to shift its Messages web app -- which allows users to manage SMS/MMS messages on their phone from another device -- from Android.com to Google.com, a media report said.

The move is seen as Google's plan to minimise the use of the word "Android", 9to5google.com reported on Wednesday.

The Android Messages web app has long been hosted at the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of "messages.android.com".

But in the coming weeks, the service could be shifted to "messages.google.com", the report said, citing an upcoming change to Chrome OS.

It is not yet clear when the change will come into effect, but Google may temporarily use both the URLs for to make the transition to messages.google.com smoother.

Researchers at global IT security firm Quick Heal Technologies have discovered in Google Play Store certain fake apps that trick people to download and rate other sponsored apps.

"These applications appear to be genuine as a PDF reader, PDF Downloader, PDF Scanner etc., but don't have such functionality," Rupali Parate, an Android malware analyst at Quick Heal Technologies wrote in a blog post on Friday.

These applications prompt users to download and rate five star to sponsor apps in order to unlock this application.

After installation of other application and rating, the user would be able to use the PDF reader after 24 hours.

"But after 24 hours, the same loop starts. It asks users to login with some created password and asks them to download the same application to unlock the application," Parate said.

The basic intention of this application is to increase the download count and good rating of sponsored apps. The sponsored application also does the same thing.

"Users should be careful while downloading such fake applications. User can easily recognize it by going through review," Parate said, adding that Quick Heal had reported these applications to Google.

NetApp, a leader in the Hybrid Cloud data services, on Thursday announced three research grants to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Jodhpur, Kharagpur) and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for the advancement of research in data management space.

The company awarded fellowships to professors from IITs and IISc to further research in the areas of data management and security.

"The grants come with no strings attached and we don't claim any IP from the research, allowing for open technology propagation," said Deepak Visweswaraiah, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, NetApp.

The fellowship programme has so far granted 31 research partnerships with IP (Intellectual Property) free grants up to $20,000 over the last 10 years in the country, the company said in a statement.

For 2018, the NetApp Faculty Fellowship (NFF) was awarded to Professor Vijay Kumar of IISc Bengaluru to support research in private information retrieval and coded computation to enhance security in the age of Cloud Computing.

"The best research is done when you are working on something which has some practical relevance apart from theoretical interest. What this partnership with NetApp has allowed us to do is to bridge this gap, because by talking to companies, we get a sense of what the data industry is looking for," said Kumar.

Another fellowship went to Professor Bivas Mitra of IIT Kharagpur for research on Machine Learning (ML)-based model development for storage system trouble-shooting and workload characterisation.

Professor Subhajit Sidhanta of IIT Jodhpur has been granted the NetApp Student Fellowship (NSF) to investigate the trade-off in performance and consistency for widely distributed systems used in IoT and Fog computing.

"Through the fellowships, NetApp encourages leading-edge research in storage and data management, and seeks to foster relationships between academic researchers and our technical community," said Visweswaraiah.

In a bid to reach out to the far-flung areas and provide healthcare to people living in the countryside, India's largest online health camp, myUpchar, launched its "Saathi" app and "Health Card" in the state capital on Wednesday.

"Under the new model, myUpchar has a partner in the operating villages along with a team of volunteers and support staff, who collect the basic details like weight, height, blood pressure, glucose, pulse and temperature, and shares those on the app with the doctor," an official said.

During the launch event, the company declared that the users of this healthcare app are mostly from Lucknow, hence the launch event was organised in the capital city of Uttar Pradesh.

In view of the upcoming trends of online healthcare services in different cities, myUpchar decided to launch it for the rural population. In the near future, myUpchar will be participating in the healthcare awareness and soon bring in e-clinic networks.

"The focus of myUpchar is to solve the real healthcare problems in rural India where there are negligible healthcare facilities. Unlike other healthcare companies who serve only the elite class people, myUpchar is putting in every effort and hard work to solve the healthcare problems of the rural population in our country," portal's co-funder Rajat Garg said.

Further elaborating, he said: "The demand for online healthcare services is more in Lucknow as compared to the other cities of India. Every month, 11 per cent of Lucknow's population has been seen urging for online healthcare services, which inspired us to launch 'Saathi' as well as 'Health Card' in Lucknow."

Google on Wednesday released a revamped version of an app meant to help small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) manage profile on-the-go and boost customer engagement.

The "Google My Business" app is a simple and free tool for SMBs to start their digital journey through listings on Google and keep their business presence up-to-date on Google Search and Google Maps, the company said.

The new app allows businesses to update their profile, converse with customers on-the-go.

New features such as the new post button, a customer tab and the bottom navigation bar, allow businesses to follow and message customers directly from the app, enhancing engagement between both the parties.

"The new Google My Business app deepens our commitment to help businesses grow online. The new app will encourage businesses to manage their presence on Google in real time, make their profiles more appealing and interact with customers," Shalini Girish, Director, Marketing Solutions, Google India, said in a statement.

"For instance, if you're a restaurant owner and have a packed house on a Friday night, the app allows you to create a post with a picture of the restaurant to engage with prospective customers on Maps and Search," Girish said.

"It's this real-time presence that we hope will go a long way in helping businesses attract new customers and bring back existing ones," Girish added.